There’s been a lot of disparagement about casting Tilda Swindon as the Ancient One, but I think her visual androgyny underscores the sense of ambiguity about reality.
I’m more bothered that Hollywood censors itself to appease Chinese communist political sensibilities because profit. The gender swapping is merely eye rolly.
I mean, The Sorceror Supreme is not well known by the average movie going public, you pretty much have to do an origin story for him because nobody knows who he is. You can get away with not doing an origin for Batman because everyone knows who Batman is. I bet 90% of Americans have no idea what Dr. Strange’s first name is, much less his origin story.
They certainly did. How do you think the team formed? They told us just enough of each individual’s backstory, but the movie was about the team, and we watched the team develop.
Strange needs an origin once and the nice thing about the MCU is we won’t have to see it 50 more times like every time Batman appears in a movie.
Exactly. The more well-known superheroes and their backstories are part of the collective unconsciousness, so people roll their eyes when we see Krypton go boom yet again, or the Waynes get shot dead in the alley yet again, or the spider bite Peter Parker yet again. But there are still plenty of superheroes whom the general public (as opposed to the dyed-in-the-wool comic fans) don’t know the backstories of and so it would be a logistical nightmare to just drop them in the middle of the hero’s adventures. Dr. Strange is one of them–with the added problem that his universe is just SO over-the-top that the average moviegoer would be utterly lost. So I personally don’t mind the idea of an origin story for him as much as I would a re-hash of Supes or Bats or Spidey.
(Come to think of it, did a whole lot of the general public know Iron Man’s origin before the movie came out?)
No, not at all. In fact, it’s my guess that if you said the name Iron Man to the general public before that movie was made, they’d recognize it as a Black Sabbath song first, before that of a comic book character.
Exactly, GOTG (which is my favorite of all the MU films so far) was more like The Magnificent Seven, a film showing the formation of a team, with just enough backstory of the characters that you needed to know.
Origin stories are overrated. I was a fan of the Justice League comic book for five years before I learned (or cared) about the origins of any of the members beyond Superman and Batman. Batman didn’t even get an origin story until his seventh appearance (Detective Comics #33; he debuted in #27).
You’re correct. Not only that, if I’m not mistaken something happened on the night it premiered, and it was pre-empted through much of the country. And I know there may be many out there who’ll be shocked to hear this, but back in the 1970’s MANY programs were never rerun or shown again. Because of this that movie took on a sort of “mythic” status, as many of us never had the chance to see it’s initial airing and didn’t see it until many years later.
Yes, it was so much better than the Captain America stuff. But I watched all of it, because SUPERHEROES! I don’t remember enough of the Spidey movies to really compare. I think I’ll just let that state of affairs continue.